Category: Uncategorized

Made in L.A. Writers publisher and anthology series co-editor Cody Sisco asked this question of the volunteer story editors for volume seven. Here are their responses.

Mitch Lopes da Silva

Author of “The Biltmore Girls” in Made in L.A. Vol. 6: Hollywood Adjacent

A “great L.A. story” looks at Los Angeles honestly. It happens when an author acknowledges the stereotypes and clichés that exist about this place, and refuses to accept them as definitive. The author writes something honest, then we fall in love with that honesty, and one way or another we end up getting our hearts dragged out of our bodies.

@authormlopesdasilva on Instagram

Amy Jones Sedivy

(Just) A Girl in the World in Made in L.A. Vol. 4: Beyond the Precipice and “Driving the Band” in Made in L.A. Vol. 6: Hollywood Adjacent

A great story about L.A. has specific locations. The intersection of Beverly and Virgil. Barnsdall Park. The Museum of Jurassic Technology. The backside of Chinatown. Western all the way south. Basically, Randy Newman’s song, “I Love L.A.” 

Amy is a retired high school English teacher, spending my days reading and writing fiction here in the hilly part of Highland Park. My Instagram is @ajsediv

Christine Heriat

Author of “The Secret Fishing Spot” in Made in L.A. Vol. 6: Hollywood Adjacent

For me, a great story about Los Angeles subverts expectations of the city, its residents, or what happens here. It reveals a sliver of Los Angeles we never imagined existed and leaves us with a lingering need to explore. 

Christina Hoag

Author of “The Couch” in Made in L.A. Vol. 5: Vantage Points

L.A. glitters and sparkles in the global imagination, but that’s only one facet of the gemstone. The best stories dig deep into the urban underbelly, the struggles, the failures, the violence, the sweat, the rot, and yes, the dreams that sometimes do come true, that give the city its soul.

You can find @christinahoagauthor on Instagram and Facebook, or at christinahoag.com.    

Saturday, November 5 at 5pm at The Book Jewel

Join contributors and editors of Made in L.A. Volume 4: Beyond the Precipice for an interactive literary event.

We will discuss how to transform creative inspirations—drawn from L.A. settings—into stories that captivate.

Meet Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, Noriko Nakada, Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley, Cody Sisco, Rachael Warecki, and Hazel Kight Witham.

The Book Jewel

6259 W 87th St.

Los Angeles, CA 90045

The Made in L.A. Writers want to thank everyone who came out to see us at this year’s L.A. Times Festival of Books! We enjoyed meeting and speaking with many of you this past weekend while we manned—and womanned—Booth #835, which we plan to return to next year.

The headline for this past weekend is that, with your fantastic support, we SOLD OUT of our first anthology, Made in L.A.: Stories Rooted in the City of Angels. We planned our initial print run to be ambitious compared to sales of our individual books last year, and we still came home with zero-zilch-nada!

We are also very pleased to announce that the anthology will soon be carried at bookstores across Los Angeles, which feels like a huge achievement for a few plucky indie authors. You can pick up the book now from DIESEL, A Bookstore, Skylight Books, and The Last Bookstore, and soon it will appear on the shelves in additional bookstores in Los Angeles. We’ll make announcements about other bookstores, including readings by contributors, throughout the summer.

The anthology is also available on Amazon.com in print and ebook, so you can pick it up there as well if you don’t have it already.

Regardless of how the anthology may end up in your hands, though, we appreciate your feedback. In the lead-up to the festival, you may have seen our pictures of the anthology around town—at bookstores, restaurants, libraries, and even Union Station! We want to encourage you to continue this tradition if you are out and about with your anthology and show us where you read it.












Be sure to tag us in the photo @madeinlawriters on Twitter @MadeInLAWriters and Instagram @madeinlawriters.

We’ve received a few great reviews so far, but we’d love to have more! Please consider adding a rating for the book and your comments on the anthology’s Amazon page or on Goodreads. We welcome all feedback about our anthology, as we hope to produce additional volumes in the future!

Our authors—Allison Rose, Cody Sisco, and Gabi Lorino—also had a great time finding new readers and reconnecting with established readers at this year’s fest. The Festival of Books is usually a great time, but this year was outstanding. We owe you all a big THANK YOU… because without you, we couldn’t do what we do.

Made in L.A. Writers